Gun Shows in America

Tupperware®
Parties for Criminals

Section
Five: Where the Famous and the Infamous Shop

The
Famous

Gun shows appeal to a wide range of firearm
enthusiasts—from hunters and collectors looking for bargains to anti-government
militia members preparing for battle against the New World Order. One show organizer
characterized attendees as "the same kind of people [you find] at malls" and noted
that the shows were a popular destination for local celebrities, from sports heroes
to politicians.

An organizer for the North Texas Gun
Club lists singer Mel Torme and members of the Dallas Cowboys as visitors to his
shows. And gun shows appear to be a favored forum for political candidates in
conservative locales. The North Texas Gun Club's shows have hosted Texas state
political opponents Glen Box and Pete Sessions. Earlier this year the New York
Times reported that during his failed campaign for the U.S. Senate in Virginia,
former Reagan official Jim Miller went to gun shows so often that "his traveling
aide [would] monitor the candidate's purchases to make sure that he...[did]...not
violate the Virginia law restricting a buyer to one handgun a month."

Probably
the most famous politician with an affinity for gun shows is presidential candidate
Pat Buchanan, who prior to the March 1996 Arizona primary attended a Phoenix gun
show in black cowboy shirt and hat. Urging his supporters to "take back the nation,"
the New York Times reported that he promised fellow gun show participants
that he would protect the right to bear arms as part of his "crusade for America."
Buchanan's comments, accompanied by the image of the presidential candidate holding
a rifle over his head, made headlines across America.

And the Infamous

Gun shows hold a particular appeal
for the pro-gun fringe. Militia members and other extremists attend shows not
only to purchase weapons, but also to distribute anti-government materials and
recruit new members.

As noted in Section Two, in 1980
ATF Director G.R. Dickerson warned of the role gun shows had played in supplying
weapons to a wide range of criminals—from the Symbionese Liberation Army to would-be
presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore. The Weather Underground and the Black Liberation
Army were also listed as having acquired firearms at gun shows. Two decades later,
only the names have changed.

As early as 1993 the FBI,
ATF, and Arizona Department of Public Safety were warned that Oklahoma City bombing
suspect Timothy McVeigh's activities at a gun show raised suspicions that he might
be dangerous and warranted investigation. According to June 1995 Associated
Press and Mesa Tribune reports:

The
warning stemmed from a Phoenix police detective's concern when McVeigh demonstrated
how a flare gun he was selling could be used to shoot down an `ATF helicopter....'
McVeigh also was selling caps with `ATF' spelled in simulated bullet holes and
was passing out the home address of an FBI sniper who fatally shot the wife of
Idaho militant separatist Randy Weaver....

In
June 1995, ABC World News Tonight reported that Timothy McVeigh's Army
friend Michael Fortier had allegedly admitted to joining McVeigh and Terry Nichols
in a $60,000 robbery of an Arkansas gun collector's ranch in which 70 shotguns,
rifles, and handguns were taken. ABC World News Tonight reported that Fortier
had admitted taking many of the weapons to Kingman, Arizona and later selling
them at gun shows.

Like his alleged avenger McVeigh,
Branch Davidian leader David Koresh frequented gun shows. The St. Petersburg
Times reported that Koresh purchased a large quantity of the weapons stockpiled
at Mount Carmel (the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas) from Hewitt Handguns,
a Texas gun dealership operated by Karen Kilpatrick with Henry McMahon. Koresh
had picked up their business card at a Texas gun show. Hewitt Handguns' licensed
place of business was McMahon's home, and the Times reported that Kilpatrick
and McMahon "did business mostly on weekends traveling from gun show to gun show."
According to the Times, from 1990 to 1992, Kilpatrick and McMahon sold
Koresh approximately 225 guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition. The article noted,
"Until someone told federal agents they were arming a cult leader, they reported
these sales to nobody. By law, they were not required to do so."

In
the St. Petersburg Times article, Karen Kilpatrick said that "she thought
Koresh was buying military-style assault rifles as an investment, knowing their
value would increase if gun control laws made them harder to get. After all, he
also collected Corvettes, Harleys, boats and guitars."

In
testimony before the 1995 House Judiciary Committee during hearings investigating
federal actions at Waco, author Dick Reavis asserted that Koresh was not only
a buyer at gun shows—but a seller. Reavis testified:

[I]n
late 1991 he [Koresh] began buying guns and studying armaments. In the process,
he learned that fortunes can by made by vendors at weekend gun shows. Within a
few months, Koresh and a handful of associates were not only buying but also selling
goods at the shows—ammunition vests, or `mag bags,' gas masks and Meals-Ready-to-Eat,
or packaged military rations. They did it for fun, to learn, and to make a profit.

While McVeigh and Koresh may be two
of the best known gun show customers, there are other lesser known but equally
discomforting attendees. According to the January 23, 1995 issue of National
Review, convicted serial killer Thomas Dillon began his murderous career by
killing more than 500 dogs and cats, then moved on to humans—allegedly killing
at least five men. In 1989 he announced to a friend that he had quit killing animals
and began inviting the friend to attend gun shows with him. "On their long drives,"
the friend explained, "they would talk about guns, hunting—and serial murders."
The friend eventually decided to call the police. The article reported:

When a prosecutor seeking to deny him bond named him in court
as a suspect in the serial killings, another witness stepped forward with a Swedish
Mauser he had bought from Dillon at a gun show on April 5, [1992] the day the
second fisherman was killed [by Dillon]; ballistics tests [showed the Mauser had
been used in the murder and] nailed Dillon, and he eventually pleaded guilty to
five murders.

The Militia Movement

In the 1990s, festering anti-government hysteria
received validation from the National Rifle Association. The NRA bombarded gun
owners with direct mail calling federal law enforcement personnel "jackbooted
thugs" and warning readers that it was only a matter of time before President
Clinton "pushes legislation that takes away from our freedoms and creates a police
state." Its magazines, the American Rifleman and the American Hunter,
ran a series of inflammatory articles. "The Final War Has Begun" purported to
reveal a secret document confirming a wide-ranging conspiracy to disarm America.
"Confiscate, Disarm, Destroy" warned that "a national snitch system to pit neighbor
against neighbor in a taxpayer-funded war of hearsay, rumor and suspicion against
gun owners like you" was imminent. The cover story "Stop the Rape of Liberty"
raged, "American liberty is being raped. The very essence of freedom is being
ravaged by political opportunists who bear no conviction, who sustain no tradition,
and who display no understanding of the Bill of Rights....This desecration has
occurred only because gun owners have allowed it. Too many gun owners have been
too willing to stand by, to surrender, to compromise, while their enemy's honey-tongued
double-talk disguises the real seduction at work." The cover illustration showed
a politician attempting to rape a desperately struggling Statue of Liberty.

With
the NRA providing the motive, gun shows offered the means for disaffected gun
owners to get involved with the militia movement. Author William Pierce has observed
that "gun shows provide a natural recruiting environment. Many more are being
held now than ever before, and many more people are attending them." Pierce's
opinion carries more weight than most. He is the author of the infamous Turner
Diaries, the racist, anti-government screed described as the Bible of the
militia movement and believed to have inspired Timothy McVeigh's alleged bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

As
anti-government activity by militias and other extremists has grown, so has the
awareness that gun shows are not only a key source for firearms and other material,
but are a town square where extremists can gather information, make contacts,
and mingle with the like-minded. Gun shows are often nothing less than Tupperware®
parties for criminals.

The importance of gun shows
to the militia movement can be seen in the Free Militia's Field Manual: Principles
Justifying the Arming and Organizing of a Militia. In a section on "Secrecy
and Security in the Free Militia," readers are warned that "gun show" is one of
the 21 "topics and words you should stay away from when talking openly in public
or on the phone."

As Morris Dees, chief trial counsel
for the Southern Poverty Law Center and a leading expert on extremist groups,
points out in his 1996 book (with James Corcoran) Gathering Storm, militia
leaders use gun shows to disseminate their anti-government strategy. Dees also
notes that in its efforts to take its anti-government and anti-law enforcement
message to Middle America, the National Rifle Association utilized gun shows as
a key communications conduit. Dees writes that "amid tables laden with Ruger Mini-14
semiautomatic rifles, Mossberg shotguns, and Beretta 9mm pistols, and piled high
with holsters, military ponchos, and camouflage uniforms, they peddle the idea
of militias as a defense against a tyrannical government...." Dees says that "early
calls to action were posted at gun stores and handed out at gun shows that brought
together those who had tired of the paintball war games of the 1980s, and others
who just loved guns, where paramilitary fanatics like Timothy McVeigh and Terry
Nichols sold weapons, racist propaganda, and militia manuals."

In
the December 1995 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Dan S.—an undercover investigative
journalist who had been an infiltrator in the extremist movement for 12 years—spoke
about the common themes used to bring new members into the militia movement:

One thing we would preach continually at tax protest meetings
was to stockpile weapons, ammunition and food. We would tell people that, as the
protests grew, it would bring the collapse of the government, and that blacks
and Jews and Hispanics and everyone else were going to riot and come after them,
and they would have to defend their families and communities from this horde.
That's when everyone in the movement began stocking up on guns, preparing for
the downfall of the country.

According
to the article, many of these groups stockpiled weapons they obtained at gun shows:

Another gateway into the militia subculture,
which leaped into the spotlight after the Oklahoma City bombing, was the nation's
vast meshwork of gun shows with its thriving commerce in weapons, paramilitary
paraphernalia and anti-government invective. `Gun shows are huge in the movement,'
Dan acknowledged. `They're very popular in the heartland, and you can't go into
one without getting the literature. They're a key dissemination point.'

And
sometimes militia sympathizers find validation and reinforcement in the views
expressed by the politicians who attend gun shows. As reported in the New York
Times, at the February 1996 Phoenix, Arizona gun show Pat Buchanan "drew a
parallel between his enthusiastic and heavily armed audience and the minutemen
at Lexington and Concord." Buchanan warned, "What were the British coming for?
The British were coming to capture the arsenal of the colonists, because before
they could repress the colonists, they had to capture all their weapons and guns,
and then they could put them under the boot of the British crown." Such rhetoric
clearly echoes the beliefs held by many militia members and sympathizers that
a well-armed populace is all that protects America from take-over by a sinister
New World Order.